Looking through the NFL final standings,...

...there are, as always, some curious records within the records. Here are a few of them...

8-0 at home) Both Green Bay and Denver were not only perfect at home, but 11-0 overall on grass this season (and thus 1-4 on turf!).

8-0 on the road) Strangely, Dallas went just 4-4 in their luxurious digs, but undefeated on the road.

0-8 on the road) Two young teams, Oakland and Jacksonville, managed three wins at home but went winless on the road. Not that weird...

0-8 at home) But the only two wins Tampa Bay got this year were away from home, at Washington (okay) and at Pittsburgh (arguably the biggest upset of the year). Tampa was also the only team to go 0-6 in their division (and in the worst division in football, no less).

The definition of average) Not only did the Miami Dolphins go 8-8, but they were 4-4 at home, 4-4 on the road, 3-3 in the division and 6-6 in the conference (and thus 2-2 against the NFC). Their point differential was just fifteen points to the good, too; San Diego, on the other hand, wound up scoring 348 points and allowing 348 points as well, though they went 9-7.

6-0 in the division) Indianapolis and Denver both went lossless within their division, and won the division with ease. (Had Atlanta held home field today, they would've won the division by going 6-0 in the division and 1-9 everywhere else!)

Overtime champs) Oddly, Minnesota was the only club to win two overtime games this season, going 2-0 (defeating the Jets and Buccaneers).

Carolina "wins" the NFC South) despite scoring 35 fewer points than their opponents, and despite losing every game between Columbus Day (Oct 12) and Pearl Harbor Day (Dec 7). In fact, no team in the division had a winning record at home OR on the road this year.

Looking at the way divisions played each other, the NFC East went 12-4 over the AFC South (and Dallas and Philly both went 4-0); the AFC North managed to go 12-3-1 over the NFC South (with Cincinnati and Baltimore combining to go 7-0-1); and the NFC West went 12-4 against the NFC East (the Rams only went 1-3, though, beating Washington, while the other three teams went 11-1 against their eastern brethren).

Finally, Buffalo may regret its 1-3 record against the AFC West, while the New England Pats went 4-0 against the same teams. The two clubs went 8-4 in all their other games, so those interdivision matchups cost the Bills the division!

About NFL Week 16...

Pride before a fall...before the Seattle/Arizona game, Following Football is 2-0 outpredicting the casinos: Baltimore lost outright to Houston, and San Diego not only took the 49ers to OT despite their great start last night, they won outright.

But more than that, if you used our predictions to bet against the spread in this week's games, you'd've gone 10-2 with two games that were washes and two still to go!

(Therefore, we're about to look like fools in these last two games!)

UPDATE: Yup. Seattle just annihilated the team with the fourth string QB. NOT really a surprise, but it won't show up on a pure performance based model. So, we fall to 10-3 against the spread this week (w Denver/Cincy to go), and we went 2-1 outpredicting the casinos, moving to 37-34-3 for the year.

The Oakland Raiders look like they're starting to gel a little bit, don't they? Sure, they're just 3-12, but the wins against KC, SF, and now Buffalo all had some guts involved in them... The Houston Texans may not be playoff bound, but they're sure campaigning for an MVP candidate! The visual of the bloodied JJ Watt dominating the Ravens' offense will stick with the voters... The Indianapolis Colts look like the very definition of "pretenders"... The Jacksonville/Tennessee game Thursday night was a pathetic battle of 2-12 teams doomed to failure today and the impending future, containing no real stars worth watching, still managed to beat the last ever episode of The Colbert Report and every other show on cable Thursday night, So...still think that the NFL is an endangered species?

(Maybe, but not in the next few years...)

Playoffs are getting clearer...the Eagles are out, and all that's left to really determine in the NFC besides seeding is the "winner" of the South division, which will come from the winner of the game Sunday between two six-win teams, Atlanta and Carolina. Meanwhile, the AFC still has a host of eight and nine win teams fighting over a dwindling number of slots, now that the Pittsburgh Steelers hit ten wins and clinched a spot of some sort. So, two places remain, facing the Steelers, Patriots, Broncos, and Colts.

UPDATE: It's really hard to watch the Seattle Seahawks decimate the Arizona Cardinals, 35-6 as the clock is running out, and NOT think they're the favorite to repeat as Super Bowl champions in the same stadium they won in tonight. Hop onto ESPN.com and take a look at Marshawn Lynch's impossible run for a 79-yard touchdown, as well as Russell Wilson's sick TD run towards the end of the game. You won't be disappointed.

...AND, what about the "wooden spoon"? Who gets the first draft pick?

Six teams have a shot at the worst record in the NFL: Tennessee, Oakland, Jacksonville, and Tampa all have 2-12 records, with the New York Jets and Washington one game up at 3-11. 

Projecting the last two games, the key may be the Tennessee at Jacksonville debacle this Thursday night - talk about a bad game. This season has shown that teams simply are not ready to play on Thursday nights, and the game is either a blowout (with one unprepared team) or a sludge match (with two). Add to that two BAD teams to begin with, and look out, America! You've been warned!

Regardless, the winner of that game probably takes themselves out of contention, because they'll each be heavy underdogs against division heavyweights Indy and Houston in week 17, even with extra time to prepare. Meanwhile, Oakland will be the underdog week 17 at Denver UNLESS they rest everybody for the playoff run (possible), but they'd still lose in more likelihood. This week's game, hosting Buffalo, may be more winnable. And Tampa Bay has two games that are at home, but against teams that need to win for their own playoff ambitions (Green Bay, New Orleans). All other things equal, we'd bet on the Buccaneers being the most likely to finish 2-14. But, if Tennessee loses both games, they ARE the #1 pick.

Highlights of the upcoming Week 12...

Games of interest for the week of November 18-24, 2014...

RIVALRIES! North Carolina @ Duke Thursday night (Duke favored by 6-9 points), and the Kansas City Chiefs head to Oakland Raiders that night as well (KC by 8). The other big FBS rivalries are in California: Stanford @ Cal in the afternoon, and USC @ UCLA in the evening (both FF and Vegas favor the Bruins by 3, so it's a pick'em game on a neutral field!). But the really fun rivalries are in the FCS, where Saturday is the day of The Game: Yale @ Harvard (Harvard should be a 16 point favorite), as well as two classics out west: Sacramento St @ UC Davis (the Hornets are favored by one on the road) and Montana St @ Montana (the Griz should win by 4 at home). Update: upsets Thursday! Duke loses BIG, 45-20, and the Raiders beat the spread AND KC, 24-20!

CANADIAN LEAGUE CONFERENCE FINALS on Sunday! It's going to be Montreal @ Hamilton,  the rubber match of the Eastern Conference slugfest! Hamilton won the last game of the season by more than Montreal beat them earlier, thereby securing the home field for this game to determine the East's entry into the 102nd Grey Cup! We see this as a pick'em game on a neutral field, so give the Ti-Cats the edge at home by three.

Meanwhile, Edmonton earned the right to travel to Calgary for the Western Conference final, where they'll be heavy underdogs against the best team in the regular season at 15-3. We pick the Stampeders by 10 at home, but Edmonton has shown that they're the best hope of preventing Calgary from raising the Cup this year, with a pair of 9-9 teams battling for the chance to face this game's winner next week.

BACK ON THIS SIDE OF THE 49th PARALLEL, there are some great games coming up this weekend! The K-State/WVU matchup Thursday should be a lot of fun, as will Minnesota @ Nebraska on Saturday. Curiosity as to what Kansas will do at Oklahoma - can they continue the strong play of their last two (home) games? Arizona @ Utah offers a hope of some great play, as does Ole Miss @ Arkansas.

THERE ARE SOME BAD MATCH-UPS out there, too...Why are you playing FCS teams at this stage of the season, Florida? Georgia? Alabama? Auburn? For all the chest-puffing and boasting the SEC does, games like this (against Eastern Kentucky, Charleston Southern, Western Carolina, and Samford) make them look foolish and scared. Which is foolish, since they could easily schedule a lower level FBS school if they needed another bodybag game, for the pre-season! If you need a break from the admitted rigors of the SEC schedule, put a bye in there!

The worst one, however, is our old pal Savannah St, who plays their (ahem) traditional rival BYU on Saturday afternoon. Our tier system and Sagarin's ratings make this about a 55-point spread, meaning the Cougars should win by eight touchdowns. WHY? Why play this game at all? Was BYU that desperate for a game that they had to schedule the lowest level FCS team they could find? 

There are two other interesting games in the FCS: former multiple champion Youngstown St plays at current multiple champion North Dakota St (the Bison are twenty point faves), and on the other end of the scale, Towson goes to bottom-feeder Rhode Island, just about the only team lower than they are (Towson's a seven point fave).

And we CAN'T FORGET THE NFL, the league that never goes dark! Following the Adrian Peterson verdict today (out the rest of the season), it'll be interesting to see the Viking crowd reaction when Green Bay comes in Sunday and runs up fifty on them,too. Detroit's got a big challenge, going to New England the week after seeing them annihilate Indy. Miami has a great test this week too, going into Mile High to face Denver. Finally, in the spirit of the SEC, the Jacksonville Jaguars go into Lucas Oil Stadium to face the Indianapolis Colts, a 15-point favorite (a line you very rarely see in the NFL, but a very accurate one in our opinion). Pittsburgh and Carolina get the last byes of the season this week.

AFL Comparison #9: Greater Western Sydney Giants

The longest named team in the Southern Hemisphere (I resisted the temptation to compare them to the "Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim" on name length alone!) is also the youngest team in the AFL, having just finished its third season of competition on the footy pitch. GWS is not only young as a franchise, but its roster is insanely young as well - stocked with draft picks in its formation stages, and adding to it by being winners of the "wooden spoon" in its first two years of existence (the last place finisher), thereby picking up more top draft picks, their lineup averaged an age barely able to drink in celebration of its rare wins (three in the first two years combined!). Their progress was noticeable this year, moving up the ladder two places and winning six games, including a landmark, season-opening victory over its cross-town rival, the 2012 champion Sydney Swans, 99-67. 

The reward for their budding experience during the draft period just concluded? Trade some of it away for more draft picks! Although they did get veteran All-Australian Ryan Griffin in a ransom hostage situation trade with the Western Bulldogs, most of their roster got younger, incredibly, over the last two weeks. What it appears the Giants will end up doing, it seems, is continue to shoot for the future, rather than try to win now.

Their American counterpart: The Minnesota Timberwolves

The classic NBA example of "we're building towards a future we suspect we'll never reach" - they had Kevin Garnett for a decade...and never made the playoffs. They had Kevin Love for six years - and just kept hunting for pieces to put around him without success. They'd draft two star point guards in the same draft...GWS had four star full forwards - in a sport where you really can't play more than three. (That's part of the reason Tom Boyd wanted out - a number one draft pick that wasn't getting any playing time...)

The NBA planted a franchise in Minneapolis, probably out of misplaced guilt for the Lakers leaving forty years earlier (you realized the "Lakers" weren't named after any water feature in LA!). The AFL planted the Giants out in Greater Western Sydney (there had to be a shorter way to name them! We simply call them "GWS" all the time...)because they had this notion that the "greater Sydney" area would support two teams, not just the Swans. So in the three years of GWS, they've averaged less than 10,000 patrons at their home games (double that on the road, and the typical game at the MCG in Melbourne hosts forty to seventy thousand fans. 

Alternate American comparison: Jacksonville Jaguars
Maybe Jacksonville would be a better analogy...why did we need another team in Florida? Because the NFL thought the state would support another team...which is why the Jaguars are constantly the targets of rumors that they're moving (usually to LA, theoretically starving for a team). Here's an idea: let's make the Jaguars the team the NFL bases in London! Why not? They would pronounce the team "Jag-U-are", like the sports car, and give it a whole new feel - 

"What play do you run on fourth and long, coach?" - "Bomb. Play: bomb!" (That' play number 007!)